by Terri Jackson
Smith Self working with daughter, Bekah, on a school assignment about birds.
Luther Self loved to learn. As a child growing up in a working class home in Greensboro, Luther was the kid who took things apart and put them back together, making the finished product better than the original. As an adult, he served his country in the Army, founded a successful company and pursued education with a determined passion that lasted a lifetime. And after his passing in 1997, Luther’s legacy lives on through the philanthropic work of his son, Smith Winborne Self, and their family foundation.
So naming the new makerspace in the School of Education after the Self family was an easy decision. It was the commitment from the Sara Smith Self Foundation that demonstrated the community partnership needed to apply for the Teacher Quality Partnership grant. And that the new space is named the SELF Design Studio, with SELF not only being the acronym for Student and Educator Learning Factory, as well as the name of its benefactor, is more than just coincidence. “Dad loved to figure things out,” said Luther’s son, Smith. “Incorporating ‘Learning Factory’ and ‘Design Studio’ pays tribute to his work, especially since the name of Dad’s business was ‘Designer Studio.’”
Luther
truly saw education as a path to success.
After attending UNC-Chapel Hill for a year, he joined the Army Air Corp
and trained as an engineer, serving in Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Iwo Jima.
Returning to college on the GI Bill, Luther graduated from NC State as a Fulbright
Scholar and taught two years at the University of Leeds.
Upon
coming home to North Carolina, Luther met his future wife, Sara “Sally” Smith
and returned to UNC-Chapel Hill to pursue his MBA, a degree that helped him
make the “Designer Studio” custom clothing line a success. When a debilitating
illness forced his retirement in 1984, Luther turned again to education, this
time as a visiting faculty member in textiles and apparel at The University of
North Carolina at Greensboro, teaching for six years. And in 1997, Luther earned his Ph.D. with a
concentration in curriculum and teaching, becoming the oldest person at UNCG at
that time to earn a doctoral degree. He
passed way just months after walking across the stage at graduation.
Luther and Sally’s only child, Smith Winborne Self, shares
his father’s love of learning and technology, and like his dad, much of what he
knows he learned by doing it himself.
Smith, too, became an active member of the UNCG community, serving on
the Board of Visitors from 2001 – 2010. It is in his honor, along with Smith’s
daughter, Rebekah Medea Self, that the Sara Smith Self Foundation named the
SELF Design Studio.
